'All the lonely people/Where do they all come from?/All the lonely people/Where do they all belong?" The lyrics of Eleanor Rigby frequently came to mind while observing the misadventures of six characters looking for love in Alain Resnais's new film, which is based on a play by Alan Ayckbourn.
It features just seven characters, and one of them remains unseen throughout, beyond a glimpse of his right foot.
Private Fears in Public Placestransposes the play to the upmarket Bercy area of Paris in winter, and snow falls more copiously than rain lashed down on Limerick in Angela's Ashes. Flurries of snowflakes link the many individual scenes, of which there are more than 50, some very short indeed. And it happens that the composer of the lovely score is Mark Snow, best known for his X-Filesmusic.
At the outset, an estate agent, Thierry (André Dussollier), is showing an apartment to a demanding client, Nicole (Laura Morante), who is about to marry Dan (Lambert Wilson), an ex-army officer reluctant to find another job. Dan idles away his days drinking heavily at the hotel bar managed by Lionel (Pierre Arditi).
Thierry secretly fancies his deeply religious colleague Charlotte (Sabine Azéma), who lends him videotapes of her favourite TV programme in which celebrities select their favourite hymns. And she takes on an evening job as carer to Lionel's bedridden father (Claude Rich), a rude, foul-mouthed man who throws tomato and basil soup in her face.
Completing the ensemble cast, Isabelle Carré plays Thierry's sister Gaelle, who spends her evenings sadly waiting in vain for men who responded to her contact ads until eventually one appears. She is the least convincingly drawn character because Thierry looks old enough to be her father, and it seems unlikely that such an attractive young woman would have to resort to personal columns.
The story is structured so that the actions of the protagonists affect each other's lives, even those of whom they are entirely unaware, and none of them meets all of the others over the course of the film. The humour is bittersweet and founded on the assumption that appearances are deceptive, which they are given the propensity of the characters for lying to each other and themselves, and keeping their true natures, including their fears, private in these public places.
After the two-part Smoking/ No Smoking(1994), this is the second Ayckbourn adaptation directed by Resnais, one of the great French film-makers, who turned 85 this summer and remains admirably productive. Private Fears in Public Placesis significantly lighter and slighter than his finest work - Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbadand his only English-language film, Providence. Far from concealing its theatrical origins, it happily draws attention to them.
However, with such a spirited cast of mostly Resnais regulars on form under his deft direction, the movie, which is witty as it is melancholy, proves hard to resist.
